Marketing Conference Notes: The Exclusive Collection

Lets face it: marketing conferences don’t always pop up at the best times. Sometimes tight deadlines strike and you cant attend. Other times the perfect conference sneaks up on you and its too late to register.

Besides, it’s difficult to gage how relevant a conference will be to your agency, your leads, and your demographic. In fact, sometimes you only find out about how valuable a conference is after it’s too late. It’s not uncommon to learn about this after you’ve attended a conference, or after you didn’t attend one and missed out.

The best way to avoid these frustrating situations is to do your research and play a stiff game of catch up to find out what you missed. But that’s not in everyone’s time and resource budget.

That’s why we’ve created this exclusive collection of marketing conference notes. We can’t tell you what conferences will benefit your agency specifically. However, we can give you all the information that your agency might benefit from to help you today, and help you make decisions tomorrow.

In this exclusive collection of marketing conference notes you’ll find all of our behind the scenes notes from the conferences we’ve attended.

The Best Parts of This Conference:

Forged connections with enterprise marketing and advertising agency professionals who it would be difficult to connect with otherwise.

Take notes on strategy andexecution improvements handed down from giants in the industry.

This conference focused heavily on knowledge on topics that matter most to enterprise marketers.

This Conference Lacked:

A strong social media presence. The professionals who attended this conference were not avid social media users during the event.

Attendee diversity. This conference had a lot of enterprise agencies and their clients, which led to content focussed around this demographic.

Opportunities to network and relate to knowledge. It was difficult to forge meaningful connections given that the attendees were not representative of HeyOrcas customer base (enterprise clients have an immense budget). The knowledge in this conference was not representative of the regular marketer (broader, generalized topics).

Conference Topics of Focus

The evolution of marketing and advertising: how the industries have changed, and how agencies can adapt.

1. Branding

Conquering the You-niverse: Branding on the Individual Scale

Targeted marketing and advertising is the new normal. Generalizing an audience and a campaign is archaic and ineffective.The old approach fails to leverage available data, which can improve marketing, advertising, product, and consumer experience.

Today’s consumer wants to connect with a brand. They want brands to know who they are, and what they like.

Steve Babcock discussed how marketers and branding experts can leverage data to personalize and individualize their strategy and content.Babcock argues that empathy is the key to creating a personalized and individualized marketing and branding consumer experience.

Key Points Made in the Discussion:

Branding has changed. Branding theory assumed that everyone is the same.

Today, brands are in the individuals hands (on their phones, TVs, and social channels).

Branding should focus on solidifying shared purpose and service a sustained emotional connection between consumer and product.

Branding strategy and execution must be empathetic.

Empathy can help you capitalize on individualized and personalized marketing trends.

Key Learnings:

The time is now for data-centred marketers and branding specialists. Focus on sharing data insights to properly segment audiences, and establish laser-focussed niches.

Branding teams must focus these insights to make good branding decisions. Data-driven marketing has created the worlds first real-time focus group. Test your decisions and make appropriate changes.

Stop generalizing and using your intuition in your branding efforts. This is an outdated approach. Branding efforts should mirror the data-centric model that digital marketing takes.

A large part of your market research in 2018 should focus on understanding your audiences’ feelings and perspective. Consider how they feel when they are being marketed to, and use this to motivate your branding choices.

2.Influencer Marketing

Brands are People, People are Brands

Media ownership is drastically changing. Celebrity influencer marketing is becoming more independent and more powerful for brand affinity.

Rev Run, one of the most successful celebrity influencers and an early innovator in influencer marketing, discussed why you should fuse branding with celebrity influence.

Key Points Made in the Discussion:

Networks used to own audiences and distribute content. Today, individuals own their audience. They control and distribute their own content.

Media networks will disappear soon enough. The world is becoming fragmented and decentralized. The millions of dollars that used to be invested in networks will go towards new channels that do a better job promoting products and connecting with consumers.

Celebrities, artists, and influencers used to call brands for exposure and screen time. Today, brands are calling celebrities, artists, and influencers for an endorsement.

If you want to get the word out, then call the influencers. They can and will push for your brand, which may lead to a genuine partnership.

People can smell authenticity. Be mindful of this when you form brand partnerships and work with an influencer.

Key Learnings:

Celebrities, artists, and influencers are becoming more powerful as the days progress.Their audience ownership is growing, and they are able to control branding and messaging on their network of choice.They do this by leveraging social media to distribute their own content to their followers.

A social endorsement is different than the old TV commercial endorsement. Fans and followers actively follow these influencers by choice and listen to what they have to say.Followers genuinely listen to those whom they follow. They will support them. This is one key reason why influencer marketing is so effective.

Be cautious of who you partner with. An influencer must genuinely support your brand, otherwise their followers will sense in-authenticity. This could damage your brand.

Creativity Meets Brand Outcomes: There is Where the Magic Happens

It’s easy to overlook creativity in your marketing efforts. Data is the driving force behind most strategy and execution. However, influencer marketing is growing in popularity. Agencies should not overlook how vital creativity is to a successful marketing plan, and an influencers marketing approach.

Ellis, Patrick, and Todd discussed the importance of creativity within influencer marketing for successful campaigns, and what you should look for in any influencer partnership.

Key Points Made in the Discussion:

Content that performs well is comprised of two things: premium creative content, and highly targeted paid distribution of that content.

As companies shift towards working with influencers and other creative talent, they should screen these opportunities for quantitative and qualitative fit:

Brand affinity

Fan reach and engagement

Brand and company fit

Professionalism

Today’s consumers are not easily fooled. They can spot disingenuous influencers and content from a distance.

It’s very important that content influencers can effectively communicate with your target audience/their fan-base.

Sponsored content that sticks out like a sore thumb will probably not be very effective.

Influencers who dont effectively connect with their audience will negatively impact ROI.

The best results come from the right talent match, premium creative, and smart paid distribution.

Key Learnings:

If you decide to jump into the influencer marketing pool, then screen these individuals for brand fit, creativity, communication, and professionalism before you rely on them for brand growth.

Remember to set goals, KPIs, and expectations prior to working with influencers and creatives. This is an easy stage to overlook because influence is not intrinsically data-driven.

Make deliberate partnership decisions about the outcomes that youre looking for.

3.Social Media

THIS is Social Media: Hate it or Love it

What separates the good social media marketing from the bad? Two of Havas’ CCOs believe that good and successful social media isn’t about data and reach. Instead, it is based on genuine engagement.

Bernstein and Peterson discuss how you can get the most positive response and genuine audience engagement from your social channels.

Key Points Made in the Discussion:

People have two reactions when it comes to social media:

I hate this. Why is it on my feed?

I love this. I am sharing it with all my friends.

Social media is about content, not the apps that you find it on.

At its best, social media is very personal. At its worst, it’s lame and generic.

The beauty of social media is that it doesn’t talk at you (like TV). It talks with you.This is why it can’t be about advertising. It’s all about creating an engaging narrative with content.

Brands and agencies that struggle to create engaging narratives with their content will struggle to speak with their audience.

Key Learnings:

Social media marketing can no longer be a megaphone for your brand. Your social media presence should not be about you, or your brand. Your marketing and advertising efforts need to intertwine with your audience, their culture, and their lifestyle.

Old marketing and advertising strategies do not work well with social media. Social is a highly personalized channel. Polluting and over-saturating your audience’s newsfeed with poorly-targeted content will only get you on your audience’s bad side.

Your goal should be to produce content that seamlessly integrates with their lifestyle. They will love it and want to share with their circles.

The most successful social media marketing will engage users on a highly personal level. It will spark a discussion with them and naturally integrate a product into their life.

Paid Media for the Socially Awkward

Paid social media has opened up opportunity for accurate, yet seemingly limitless audience targeting opportunities. It can be easy to get lost in this infinite amount of data. Paid social can be a blessing and a curse!

Johnson discussed how marketers can better handle this infinite data inertia by following organizational guidelines.

Key Points Made in the Discussion:

How to Plan Paid Campaigns when you have Seemingly Endless Amounts of Data

1. Set goals before your start. Otherwise it’s easy to get lost in the data.

Make goals that are directed towards your business needs.

Consider each brands unique time-bound goals for their individual campaigns.

Compare against specific ad types (single images, slideshows, canvas, etc.) and A/B test all of them for efficacy.

Think back to your KPIs. Consider if your budget can achieve the same goals now that your plan is in action.

3. Create Opportunities. Use empathy to create and target your ads.

Look at your audience’s functional and emotional needs (empathize with their feelings and pain points) and target your ads to meet them.

Consider the same key emotions/pain points used to drive product direction.

4. Produce Ads. Every ad should be a unique test for each platform.

Use social as a place for creativity and testing.

Use the right specs (image ratios, resolutions etc.) for the unique paid environment.

Engage with your audience to improve on your ads.

5. Execute Ads. Be strategic and educated in your execution.

Pull the right levers (copy/creative/targeting/demographics) by focusing on the goals that matter to you.

6. Evaluate performance. Be consistent and detail-oriented.

Set daily check-ins to ensure that nothing goes off the rails.

Optimize your ads and give them runway time to perform.

Document everything you do and every action you take.

7. Set yourself up for success. Success is based on team effort and the big picture.

Consider the long-term picture.

Shift your marketing organizational mindset from a siloed to a collaborative approach.

Give your team integrated creative and data briefings on all of your campaigns.

Key Learnings:

Infinite data can be a blessing and a curse–helpful, yet overwhelming. Work with these endless possibilities by enforcing structure in your marketing strategy, efforts, and execution. Setting parameters will give you the guidance that you need in order to make informed and educated decisions.

Regularly check your guidelines by comparing tests that you have set within them. Change your approach based on your findings.

Creating Social Media Gold: The Art of Platform Specificity

Levin and Schneider discuss how to better understand social platforms to help you succeed on them.Your strategy and content should be different for each platform. Audience engagement should also be different on each platform.

These two creative directors honed in on how brands are winning at their social creative by exploring their platforms, focusing on specificity, and creating innovative content that matches the medium.

Key Points Made in the Discussion:

There is one consistent human truth: if it gives you the “feels,” then it’s going to work on social. That is format-agnostic and platform-agnostic.

You can’t buy attention. However, you can buy the opportunity to grab attention with good quality paid social media.

Facebook:

Facebook has diverse marketing formats. Take advantage of them! Each format can deliver a very different a unique immersive experience for your audience. Consider using Live, 360 video, and Canvas, for example.

Use Facebook video to your advantage! Video content is highly engaging. However, understand that content needs to deliver with sound on and off. Sound is an experience amplifier.

Instagram:

Touching on the audiences passion points generates the biggest win on Instagram.

This platform is for beautiful design and photography. Showcase branded and non-branded content that matches this on Instagram.

Instagram stories are the most immersive content feature on this platform. There are 300 million stories a day! Be a part of this content shift.

Stay on topic with every conversation you are a part of, or you are following. Riding a topic wave is an opportunity to grab attention with quality paid and earned social media.

Event-live tweeting is a great way to join a conversation.

Engage with your audience! Dont just write things. Be a part of a real conversation.

Key Learnings:

Cookie-cutter social media posts are no longer passable. Your social posts need to be tailored to your audience, the platform, and your brand messaging.

Personalization doesn’t just mean that your content is catered towards niche audiences likes and dislikes. Personalization also means being intentionally native and personal with your strategy. If you can make your messaging feel and look like a friend’s social posts, then you are more likely to be loved and trusted by your audience.

Content is heavily shifting towards video. Do not neglect this. Video content should be present on all of your social feeds. It has a high engagement, and your audience will most likely love it.

Be human with your content. Don’t be spammy. You should always aim to connect with your audience first before you start throwing your brand and ads into the mix.

Elevating Digital Performance with Community Engagement

User engagement insights are rarely used to improve online community engagement. However, most social media algorithms are designed to prioritize and reward content and organizations that engage with its community.

Authentic user engagement is essential for brand social media activity. But, you must understand the data, algorithms, and processes behind this social media activity. Chang discussed how companies can build engaged online communities by leveraging strategic data.

Key Points Made in the Discussion:

Community engagement strengthens your brand.

Engage your community on a variety of platforms. If you don’t have the resources, host a free AMA on Reddit.

Use the resources (like your iphone) you have to push more content to your community.

Go beyond standard user and market research. Place people into behavioural cohorts. For example: address pain and problem points in your industry by finding the underlying emotional trigger. Chat with your audience about it.

Prioritize high quality data, rather than high quantities of data.

Listen and converse with your audience to deliver the most educational experiences.

Improve your growth with discovery and search. Strategize how users will find your content. You will need to use platforms differently.

Content + distribution = contextualized social media posts.

Content is king. Distribution is queen.

Your message and presentation should match the social platform communication style.

User values + brand values = brand affinity.

Build consumer closeness to your brand through your community. Viral content is based on high-magnitude content multiplied by a high volume of users.

Key Learnings:

Social media marketers are often told to prioritize vanity metrics that don’t necessarily have a real impact on organic performance or audience engagement.

They have been told that data was used to drive strategy. That they should strategically combine social marketing channels. They believed that they knew their followers. And, they thought that they were always marketing correctly.

However, these beliefs are now incorrect. Social media marketers should shift gears. They should separate the strategies that they use on different social platforms. They must listen, converse, and provide delightful and diverse educational experiences on each platform.

In order to break out of the growth problems that SMMs face today they must focus the most on content, how it is distributed, and how their audience is engaging with it.

4.Agency Strategy

Timely, Personalized, & Relevant: How to Build a Responsive Organization

Consumers have new branding and messaging expectations in their customer journey. They want timely, personalized, and relevant messaging. They expect a human experience.

Neckes and Simon Data predict that the most successful agencies and brands will be Responsive Organizations (think Google and Amazon). These organizations can listen to customers, anticipate their needs, and address their customers in a fundamentally human way.

Key Points Made in the Discussion:

Successful client-agency relationships can no longer be transactional. They must be partnerships, they must be human, and they must be authentic.

It is extremely important to be able to blend personalization of products with company messaging.

Personalization + great product is tough to beat.

To become a responsive organization, your marketing team should focus on data collection. Data drives insights, which leads to product and messaging customization and personalization.

Be authentic with your partnerships and marketing content. When your clients brands love your content, then it is likely that the target audience will love it.

Stray away from old digital trends of eliminating human interaction at every turn. The landscape is changing.

Key Learnings:

Responsive organizations such as Google, Netflix, and Amazon are mastering timely and personable communication. For example, Google can suggest search options, products, and review opportunities that are uniquely catered to the individual user. Part of the reason why Google is so successful is because their push notifications and suggestions are uniquely personal to each individual session.

The only way Google got where they are today was by heavily investing in high quality data collection and synthesis technology and talent. They prioritized personalization for their customer journey.

Agencies that want to embrace technology in their services suite ought to learn from these organizations. Ramping up technology is a good idea, but human interaction should not be lost or sacrificed. It should be woven into the algorithm that you are selling, and it should be included in your clients experience with your agency. Your product reflects your customers experience in their eyes. They wont buy it if you are not showing them premium and personable service.

The only way to create a responsive service suite for your clients is by collecting the appropriate data that will allow you to personalize the customer journey. Invest in data collection and synthesis that will help you get there.

What Will the Agencies of the Future Do Differently?

Client marketing and advertising budgets are shrinking and brands are becoming empowered by diverse technology. There are new price points in today’s marketplace. Competition is stiff in the agency world.

Every agency needs to work hard to retain top-quality talent to provide top-notch services to their clients. This is the only way to remain a market leader. Executives from 360i, WPP, Campaign, and Done deliver three points on how their agencies are changing with the landscape in order to compete in today’s marketplace.

Key Points Made in the Discussion:

Agencies must stop being exclusively advertising partners and become digitally led business partners.

Agencies must invest more in creators (not just creatives) to solve the need for more content, in more places, more often.

Agencies must blur the lines between storytelling and data. Data can drive the effectiveness of stories by becoming a key player in the story.

Key Learnings:

The days of being the only agency that can execute a winning marketing and advertising campaign are over. There is a long list of agencies who can offer a unique set of services at a better price, with a better team, and with better services.

There are freelancers who can do the job quicker and cheaper than an entire team of intelligent consultants. Clients no longer rely on agencies as the sole provider for their growth.

Your agency must become agile and nimble experts to win over clients. Your team must be educated in the rapidly changing digital environment to stay competitive. You must also invest in your team (intrinsic happiness, education, physical health) to help them be their best.

The most successful agencies with have strong relationships with their clients. They will meet with them after hours for human experiences, and they will not rely on their clients for a paycheck.

5.Content

Why Meaningful Stories Matter More than Ever

Humans have always been storytellers and social beings. The digital age has drastically changed the ways these truths operate. Stories are being told differently today than they were a decade ago (and beyond). But despite these changes, humans still love and deeply desire stories in their daily lives.

Brendan Ripp discussed how National Geographic uses storytelling across its social media channels, and why stories are more important than ever for your brand.

Key Points Made in the Discussion:

The value proposition for National Geographic is Content + Scale + Purpose

Successful brands must be true to themselves. They must be organic, authentic, human, and purposeful.

The internet is saturated with content, so how do you make thumbstopping content?

Invest your resources in content. Invest in good storytellers, storytelling, and visuals.

Lead with visuals.

Talk about things that are important in the daily dialog.

Dominating social media is all about joining the conversation and talking about what matters daily. Important, relevant conversations spark global conversations.

You need to contribute to the where, when, and how on a level that consumers want.

Lean into purpose and mission. Brands can be a force for good and a force for growth. This point is extremely important to todays consumer.

Key Learnings:

Marketers say that content is king, but the reality is that only high-quality content is king. If your brand is serious about dominating the social sphere and being at the forefront of human communication, then you must invest your resources in content.

Never underestimate the power of stories. Do your very best to incorporate genuine and relatable storytelling in your branding efforts. Stories are the foundation of human connection and community. If you overlook the power that storytelling can bring to your brand, then you are missing out on a fundamental way that your audience can connect to you.

Brands that try and fake their persona will not succeed because there is nothing to connect to on a fundamental level. Humans crave connection and authentic stories.

Navigating the Future of Content: Challenges and Opportunities

The digital publishing landscape has undergone significant change over a one-year period.Audiences are becoming fragmented, search algorithms have drastically changed, and communities are consistently shifting.

Publishers are constantly looking for solutions for these challenges. Two leading publishing executives talk about their innovative solutions for today’s challenges.

Key Points Made in the Discussion:

Brands as Publishers: How to Use Content to Educate, Engage, and Inspire

Jennifer Barrett

Most branded content is not enticing nor engaging. It is usually garbage that is created for the sake of having content.

Content has become commoditized. Anyone can produce it,but not everyone can produce good content.

How do you produce good content? Start by asking the most important question:“can you create content that matters, changes the way people think, and changes the way people behave?” (not “can you make content?”)

Effective content doesnt just inform and entertainit inspires and moves people and drives action!

How do you create good content?

Hire professionals. Period. Good editors will hire good writers!

Mix it up. Expand the content inventory.

Show people the value that your content brings to them. Connect the dots for them.

Dude to Dad: Building an Audience Around Next-Gen Dads

Michael Rothman

Meaning something to somebody is better than meaning nothing to everybody. You need to find your tribe and mean something to them.

Brand is what people say about you when youre not in the room. Control your branding through your curated social media medium.

Building your brand and meaning something to your tribe is very important when youre absent.

Establish a personal connection when branding and representing yourself on social media. You need to nail the language, norms, & memes of your audience (your tribe) if you’re going to meaningfully connect with them.

Resist the urge to be all things to all people!

Key Learnings:

Content consumption and online audiences are constantly changing. Remain at the top of mind (and search results) by staying relevant to your community.

Connect with your community on social as a foundation before creating outstanding content. If you have no supporters, network, or tribe, then your work may be easily lost in the noise.

Do not mistake the fad for content as an excuse to produce content. All content must be intentional in its purpose and creation. It must have high creative and product value. Your content must say something important it must be substantial. There is no place for shallow content in 2018!

Focus your efforts on hiring the top content production and community management talent. These two specialists will help your agency improve your clients social and online presence.

Social media technology advancement has allowed brands to communicate, reach, and target their audiences like never before. These advances also encourage company transparency and improve consumer-brand relationships.

However, this strength doesn’t come without a weakness. Altering algorithms and media skepticism are difficult obstacles that brands and companies must overcome. In addition, brands must be on the lookout for social chatter that could alter (or destroy) brand affinity overnight.

Three communication and media experts share their tactics for present day social media challenges.

How do you integrate culture into the social channels of the organization youre working with?

Showcase your clients executive team on social. Its a great way to display and represent the company culture.

Help your clients brand become more transparent. Give their audience a look inside the organization. Focus on the company branding and make connections between that and the internal workings of the organization.

Help your client develop a personal brand and pinpoint what they want to be known for. Allow this to shine in all company messaging.

When working with your clients company culture social posts be sure to:

Focus on their tone and voice when you meet them in real life.

Listen to their analogies, passion, and lifestyle. These items make them who they are.

Showcase how the executives engage and interact with the audience on a human and organic level through actions, not descriptions.

Test your messaging and learn from the results.

How do You Protect Your Clients Reputation at the Speed that Social Media Moves?

Always have a crisis plan in place.

Make sure that the information and the stories that you are sharing are accurate and factually correct.

Be vocal. Make sure your voice is heard by fully answering questions that arise.

Do a lot of social listening—especially with influencers, analysts, and media professionals. It’s good to understand their interests so that you can foresee potential crisis.

Build relationships and forge a strong network. Stakeholders who are happy to engage with you and trust you can be great resources for support. They can create relevant content that helps and defends you in the long run.

Key Learnings:

Building audience trust should be a priority for your agency’s communication plan in 2018. Recent issues in the social and media landscape have led to rising audience skepticism, and deprioritized branded and sponsored content in social news feeds.

Your agency should work extra-hard to build up your community and network to combat these issues. Forge relationships with influencers and consumers. Gaining their partnerships and trust is a great way to establish a network of support. This can also help you get back into your audiences news feed.

Constant contact is essential for brand awareness and social listening. Meaningful connections are the best way to stay at the top of mind and have a network of support in the event of a PR disaster or mishap.

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